There's all this talk of how much SMS messages cost per byte and how that relates to the bandwidth available on the network and so on yet no one has mentioned one of the best comments from the last time this topic was brought up here on Slashdot: The Marginal Cost of SMS is 0
Read that comment! Basically it says that it costs the telco nothing in terms of bandwidth (or anything else, really) to send your messages back and forth.
That comment was referenced in this blog post. I was so outraged after reading it that I called up AT&T and told them to make it so that I can't send or receive text messages anymore. As a side-effect, I can no longer tell when I have voice messages, but it's totally worth it.
Offtopic? It's from Children of Men. A reference to that film/book in the context of a fascist or oppressive dystopian Britain is as relevant as any reference to 1984 or V for Vendetta would be.
Paris, Moscow, Washington, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Brussels, Hong Kong, Berlin, Jakarta, New York, Stockholm, Rome, Shanghai, Caracas, Copenhagen, Mexico City, Atlanta, etc.
Thank you for this post. I have such a hard time explaining the event to people. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Another good comment was on Metafilter:
==
It seems that very few folks who are down on BM have actually tried it.
can i get a triple amen? i've known a few people who didn't have a great time (almost always b/c of their traveling companions, however), but i've never met anyone who has gone and said "that was weak."
==
In my many years in IT, I finally found a job where they actually use Notes (gasp!). One thing that really annoyed me was that everyone referred to it as "Lotus Notes"... but they pronounced it "LOtusnotes" with the emphasis on the first syllable. No one seems to know that Lotus was a company and that Notes was one of their products. They just think that's the name of the program. Even worse is they say stuff like "Well, just send me a LOtusnote". I want to strangle them all.
I use it heavily now! I got jealous of my friends with OS X Tiger and installed Microsoft's Desktop Search, which currently blows Google's offering out of the water. It's basically the only good way I've ever seen to look through my huge MP3 collection.
And so you don't think I'm some MS flunkie, I can't wait to see Google come at MS Desktop Search with the upgrade equivalent of a devastating counter-punch.
"Desktop Searching", like AJAX is something that has long been possible but is only now just appearing. It's also something everyone with more than 500MB of storage needs, where Voice Recognition was and is gimmicky, a huge pain to setup, and largely useless.
Well, having a solar sail doesn't exclude a more conventional engine. One could use an ion thruster for braking
Right, also, the space vehicle wouldn't necessarily have to go directly to its destination and stop there like a boat or car. It would slow down enough to enter orbit around whatever it was after (positioning itself and/or slowing down by orbiting other things if necessary) and then doing what it needs to do (landing, observing, etc.)
Yeah, but that Marantz thing is like a million dollars. There's that Edirol thing, too, but I'm waiting for M-Audio's pocket recorder thing.
I guess I was secretly hoping that someone would recommend one of those Asian-market-only hard disk MP3 players but that actually records at really high quality and not just enough for voice notes. I guess there's still a chance.
Thank you very much, righteous, discerning user. While you're at it, please remind everyone to:
Only install software from the original install disks.
To always, no matter what, use a condom, even if it's your wife.
Always leave the house with an umbrella in hand.
Sit down when you pee.
Only answer phone calls that display who's calling you.
Use the highest octane gasoline.
Buy name brand computers.
Get the extended warranty at the store.
Wear goggles when mowing the lawn.
Only swim in the pool with someone else present.
The truth is that everyone downloading any pirated software is vulnerable to getting spyware. Our anti-virus programs are usually pretty good about catching viruses from the occasional evil keygen.exe and 115MB setup.exe, but anti-virus programs are shitty at catching spyware. It won't be long before people with an interest in recieving spyware revenue start packaging their own warez releases with spyware trojans. Maybe they can even look just like a reputable release. But, of course, it'd be our own damn fault, right?
and silly AIM addons (great for the office chicks, not so much fun for the nice IT folk who allowed them to run AIM and then had to clean up the mess) are all great ways to pick up spy/ad/malware.
Oh man, that mention of "office chicks" spoke directly to me. The pretty girls we try to curry favor with can end up being such a liability. Then there's the others who I'm not interested in at all. One figured out how to screw up her PC w/spyware on her own. I think she likes that I reprimanded her.
So everyone is talking about how the FCC in the United States will torture your grandmother if you try using this thing. Whatever. All I want to know is where on Earth you'd actually be able to use this product.
Surely Samsung saw a market for these things... somewhere.
Is that for normal credit cards of just for EFTPOS and ATM card type transactions?
If it really is for normal credit card transactions, what happens when someone from the USA, for example (because our credit cards do not require a PIN) comes to make a purchase?
I'm an American who's travelled quite a bit and I've noticed that Americans can indeed be pretty loud and obnoxious. Young American backpackers are generally very well behaved... um... as far as their public speaking voices go, anyway, because we have a pretty good idea about American reputations. Germans in groups can be pretty loud. But no one seems to mention the loudest groups of them all: the Chinese and Koreans.
OMG guys. I'm not just lumping THE ASIANS together because I haven't thrown the Japanese in there... they seem to be quieter. And yes, I can tell the difference between all these languages. The Chinese and Koreans are the loudest. Maybe no one mentions this because somehow Americans, who are of European descent, are more accountable to Europeans, and we should behave *whitely* or something like that. I'm not trying to be racist here (although someone is very likely to call me one any minute now), I'm just saying it's never mentioned.
When I first started at University of California Santa Cruz, my orientation group was fortunate enough to hear a nice long lecture about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) by Frank Drake. It was all being filmed by a Japanese TV crew, actually(!!). We all got to ask questions and mine was "Why is it that we're out looking for planets as near to their sun as ours and carbon-based life forms and all that stuff when life in the universe is likely to be completely, totally different from ours?" He replied that SETI knows about what I was talking about, but since we know that carbon-based life exists and that it is likely to exist on certain kinds of planets with certain chemical environments a certain distance from certain kinds of stars - so THAT'S what we're looking for.
Slashdot Mirror
There's all this talk of how much SMS messages cost per byte and how that relates to the bandwidth available on the network and so on yet no one has mentioned one of the best comments from the last time this topic was brought up here on Slashdot: The Marginal Cost of SMS is 0
Read that comment! Basically it says that it costs the telco nothing in terms of bandwidth (or anything else, really) to send your messages back and forth.
That comment was referenced in this blog post. I was so outraged after reading it that I called up AT&T and told them to make it so that I can't send or receive text messages anymore. As a side-effect, I can no longer tell when I have voice messages, but it's totally worth it.
Offtopic? It's from Children of Men. A reference to that film/book in the context of a fascist or oppressive dystopian Britain is as relevant as any reference to 1984 or V for Vendetta would be.
Paris, Moscow, Washington, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Brussels, Hong Kong, Berlin, Jakarta, New York, Stockholm, Rome, Shanghai, Caracas, Copenhagen, Mexico City, Atlanta, etc.
THE WORLD HAS COLLAPSED
ONLY BRITAIN SOLDIERS ON
So what's the deal with guys who are all into asses? Were they butt-fed?
Pretty much my exact experience. Who are they kidding?
Of course there was grass. What else would they have had on their lawns back then? Stupid.
Applause
Cornell, huh? I'm surprised that Mr. Rawlings has taken such a public and high-profile position.
As long as they don't do it to Deadwood, I don't care.
Another good comment was on Metafilter:
==
It seems that very few folks who are down on BM have actually tried it.
can i get a triple amen? i've known a few people who didn't have a great time (almost always b/c of their traveling companions, however), but i've never met anyone who has gone and said "that was weak."
==
In my many years in IT, I finally found a job where they actually use Notes (gasp!). One thing that really annoyed me was that everyone referred to it as "Lotus Notes" ... but they pronounced it "LOtusnotes" with the emphasis on the first syllable. No one seems to know that Lotus was a company and that Notes was one of their products. They just think that's the name of the program. Even worse is they say stuff like "Well, just send me a LOtusnote". I want to strangle them all.
Or is it going to be like Tiger was to Panther?
I thought that Tiger was just going to be some simple little enhancements, but they actually changed and added a whole lot of things.
Grammer Nazi troll. :)
I use it heavily now! I got jealous of my friends with OS X Tiger and installed Microsoft's Desktop Search, which currently blows Google's offering out of the water. It's basically the only good way I've ever seen to look through my huge MP3 collection.
And so you don't think I'm some MS flunkie, I can't wait to see Google come at MS Desktop Search with the upgrade equivalent of a devastating counter-punch.
"Desktop Searching", like AJAX is something that has long been possible but is only now just appearing. It's also something everyone with more than 500MB of storage needs, where Voice Recognition was and is gimmicky, a huge pain to setup, and largely useless.
Right, also, the space vehicle wouldn't necessarily have to go directly to its destination and stop there like a boat or car. It would slow down enough to enter orbit around whatever it was after (positioning itself and/or slowing down by orbiting other things if necessary) and then doing what it needs to do (landing, observing, etc.)
I guess I was secretly hoping that someone would recommend one of those Asian-market-only hard disk MP3 players but that actually records at really high quality and not just enough for voice notes. I guess there's still a chance.
THUMP THUMP THUMP ... is this thing on?
I'm looking for a good solution and maybe you've found one.
- Only install software from the original install disks.
- To always, no matter what, use a condom, even if it's your wife.
- Always leave the house with an umbrella in hand.
- Sit down when you pee.
- Only answer phone calls that display who's calling you.
- Use the highest octane gasoline.
- Buy name brand computers.
- Get the extended warranty at the store.
- Wear goggles when mowing the lawn.
- Only swim in the pool with someone else present.
The truth is that everyone downloading any pirated software is vulnerable to getting spyware. Our anti-virus programs are usually pretty good about catching viruses from the occasional evil keygen.exe and 115MB setup.exe, but anti-virus programs are shitty at catching spyware. It won't be long before people with an interest in recieving spyware revenue start packaging their own warez releases with spyware trojans. Maybe they can even look just like a reputable release. But, of course, it'd be our own damn fault, right?Oh man, that mention of "office chicks" spoke directly to me. The pretty girls we try to curry favor with can end up being such a liability. Then there's the others who I'm not interested in at all. One figured out how to screw up her PC w/spyware on her own. I think she likes that I reprimanded her.
Offices are so great.
Was it just me, or did anyone else out there jump at the first mention of "crystals" in the article? My first thought was "OMG lightsabers".
You saw it here first.
Surely Samsung saw a market for these things ... somewhere.
If it really is for normal credit card transactions, what happens when someone from the USA, for example (because our credit cards do not require a PIN) comes to make a purchase?
OMG guys. I'm not just lumping THE ASIANS together because I haven't thrown the Japanese in there ... they seem to be quieter. And yes, I can tell the difference between all these languages. The Chinese and Koreans are the loudest. Maybe no one mentions this because somehow Americans, who are of European descent, are more accountable to Europeans, and we should behave *whitely* or something like that. I'm not trying to be racist here (although someone is very likely to call me one any minute now), I'm just saying it's never mentioned.
Oh yeah, and to keep this all on-topic: Aliens!
When I first started at University of California Santa Cruz, my orientation group was fortunate enough to hear a nice long lecture about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) by Frank Drake. It was all being filmed by a Japanese TV crew, actually(!!). We all got to ask questions and mine was "Why is it that we're out looking for planets as near to their sun as ours and carbon-based life forms and all that stuff when life in the universe is likely to be completely, totally different from ours?" He replied that SETI knows about what I was talking about, but since we know that carbon-based life exists and that it is likely to exist on certain kinds of planets with certain chemical environments a certain distance from certain kinds of stars - so THAT'S what we're looking for.